Flame filled the sky.
Pillars of molten gold tore from my hands, ripping upward like grasping fingers as Chaos scorched the air itself. Heat warped the world, bending light and shadow until the horizon burned orange.
The Simurgh fled from it, angelic wings snapping wide in a retreat that looked far too desperate.
My eyes began to burn.
They were the gateway now. Through them, the unendurable frenzy poured into the heavens, shrouding the sky as missiles of flame rained outward in violent arcs. The pressure made my skull throb, but I welcomed it.
Lacking her earlier precision, the Simurgh's defenses now looked off-balance and sluggish. Buildings rose clumsily in defense, hurled up more from instinct than any real strategy.
I cackled as the flame finally bit.
Golden-orange fire raked across crystalline flesh, and this time it wasn't blocked cleanly. It scorched. It tore. Sections of her body warped and softened, the nigh invincible body of the Endbringers melting beneath the Frenzied Flame. Smoke and fire painted the sky into a blazing mural.
"Neutralization complete…" a warbled voice cut through my revel.
I barely spared it a glance. The canister that had held Dragon was gone, crushed into twisted scrap. Vapor hissed from ruptured seams, only to burn away the instant it touched the heat-soaked air. A flicker of concern surfaced, and I crushed it just as quickly.
The Simurgh needed to burn.
A notification flared across my vision.
[Feat achieved! Foiler of Fate]
[+1 Platinum Gacha Ticket]
I ripped it open without slowing.
[Cloak of Levitation]
|Elite Item|
Marvel - A relic belonging to the Sorcerer Supreme. This cloak allows its user to fly freely, but not only that but it is also self-aware and can act on its own to pull its wearer out of danger and hinder their opponents.
I shoved my hand into item space and felt something brush my fingers. A magnificent red cloak flowed into my grip, then lifted itself and settled around my shoulders with deliberate care. The world dropped an inch as my boots left empty air.
Sheng said something. It didn't matter. None of it mattered except the Endbringer.
I willed it, and the cloak surged upward, carrying me into the burning sky.
From my hands I hurled great arcs of flame, painting violent death through the air. Capes flinched and scattered, diving away as the heat filled the sky in suffocating waves. Let them flee.
The Simurgh would serve as the first true kindling to the pyre.
She retreated again, constantly repositioning, never letting my fire touch her cleanly. Heat and light blurred together until my vision throbbed, frenzy crawling beneath my skin, urging me to stop wasting time and simply erase everything in front of me.
I climbed faster. Higher.
The high winds fanned the inferno, stoking it until the flames roared louder and brighter.
I surged through smoke and heat, the cloak snapping behind me as I hurled a beam that split the clouds apart. I twisted midair and loosed another, then another, cascading fire in wide, brutal sweeps.
The Simurgh answered by ripping buildings from the ground and flinging them into my path, a storm of concrete and steel hurled with desperate intent.
Futile.
Tendrils of Frenzied Flame reached out, wrapping the debris and devouring it mid-flight.
Still, the Endbringer was canny. She never let my fire touch her telekinesis directly, slipping away from the worst of it with infuriating precision. I could feel it. Given a vector, I could spread flames of madness and despair—burn her voice, tear out her eyes—if I had even a single spark.
Fine. I would simply burn her whole.
Concrete vaporized into ash that rained down over the city as I shaped the flame in my hand, compressing it, forcing it faster, denser, sharp enough to end her. My gaze locked onto her wings, where the core hid among the thickest mass, and my eyes began to warm again.
Something slammed into my shoulder.
The cloak yanked me sideways before the follow-up could land. Rebar and knives screamed upward from below. The cloak moved on its own, snapping and batting several aside, but a few still bit into my skin.
Pain flared.
It meant nothing.
I cackled at the presumption that mere blades could end a Lord.
The Simurgh wheeled through the chaos she'd made, perfect and infuriating, lifting more of the city to use as her shield. I watched her patterns now. I knew her tricks.
My vision burned brighter, flooded with everlasting Chaos, golden-orange flame screaming within my eye as it swelled—building toward something vast and inevitable.
A beam of pure destruction crossed the sky.
Golden-orange fire lanced forward, faster than thought.
The Simurgh reacted in an instant, wrenching entire buildings into its path, but it didn't matter. The beam sheared through concrete and steel like paper, leaving only incandescent fragments tumbling away in its wake.
An arm snapped up to block.
The Frenzied Flame tore through it.
I felt it before I saw it.
The hitch of shock. The flare of confusion. Delicious.
Crystalline flesh softened, then failed, the right arm ruined to the elbow as it sloughed away like melting wax. I laughed, breathless, aching to finish it, to burn the Endbringer down to nothing and let despair be its final prayer.
How poetic it would be to make the Simurgh go mad.
I roused the flame again.
The Simurgh fled upward, and the city answered her will.
Buildings, shattered slabs of concrete, twisted steel tore free from the ground and spiraled inward, grinding together until they formed a massive cocoon of mist and dust. A shockwave punched outward, flattening air and sound alike as a gray storm swallowed the skyline.
I hurled another gout of Frenzied Flame straight into it.
The fire struck, bloomed, and hit nothing. The cocoon flowed around the attack, reshaping itself as dust and debris thickened. It swelled larger and larger until it loomed like a stadium-sized mass, blotting out the sky.
I scowled. Petty tricks.
The urge rose so temptingly. Burn the entire city. Drown her in smoke and ash. Turn the land itself into kindling so there would be nowhere left to hide. The thought felt right.
So why did I hesitate?
Why didn't I just…
A white blur cut across my path.
A black-and-steel helmeted figure braked hard in midair, shockwaves rippling out from the sudden stop. Alexandria. My hand twitched at her presence, heat crawling up my arm.
Irritation flared, hot and sharp.
"We need you to—"
"Shut up," I snapped.
The word cracked through the air. The Frenzied Flame licked at my eyes as Alexandria tensed, posture shifting from command to readiness. For a heartbeat, I imagined burning her where she hovered, reducing that defiant, invulnerable body to slag. Her very existence felt like heresy to the Flame.
I should just…
No.
No. The Simurgh first. Then… then…what?
My thoughts stuttered, grinding against one another.
Focus.
After a beat, I forced the words out. "What do you want, Alexandria?"
There was a pause, brief but telling. "Can you maintain suppression of the Simurgh's scream?"
"Chaos will not bow to some facsimile angel," I snarled. "Woe to the fool who thinks they can divine the Frenzied Flame. That bitch will remain silent as long as Chaos burns."
"As long as she's silent, we can bring in more capes and drive her—"
"Drive her off?" I cut in, incredulous. "No. I'm going to burn her alive. The core is in the base of one of the largest wings."
"Core?"
"Yes. Their heart." Irritation bled through as the flame gathered beneath my skin, coiling tighter, hotter.
More questions followed. Alexandria pressed for details, timing, limits. Each word scraped at my patience, but coordination mattered. If flushing the Simurgh out meant enduring this, so be it. For a fleeting second, the thought surfaced again. Burn Alexandria and be done with it.
She must have seen something in my expression, because she stopped. The questions died, and we hashed out the attack in clipped, efficient bursts.
Wings beat the air behind me.
I turned as Ridley, Igris, and The Fool swept back into formation, scarred and smoking but intact. Relief cut through the haze of heat. With them here, with the Flame burning this hot, ending the Simurgh felt inevitable.
I opened my mouth to speak—and frowned.
Two more figures cut through the smoke and closed in on us.
One figure was cloaked in blue-green light, their head encased in a glassy helm. The other wore a sky-blue suit streaked with designs of lightning and fire. Ridley reacted instantly, sliding in front of me with a low snarl, tail lashing as if daring them to try something.
The Triumvirate. All of them.
The urge to burn surged, a reflex sharpened by my failures to burn the Simurgh.
No. Not yet.
The Simurgh came first. Everything else could wait.
Pain flared as my eyes filled with fire, vision bleaching white at the edges. It felt glorious. Incandescent. Like shedding something weak and unnecessary, even as a stubborn trickle of life force refused to let my eyes finish burning away.
Legend spoke first, patronizing in a way that irked me. "We want to coordinate a strike. Your power clearly destabilizes the Simurgh. Can you produce something decisive enough to capitalize on that?"
The audacity almost made me laugh. To question the Flame. To doubt it. I wanted to incinerate him mid-sentence, but the certainty of burning the Simurgh cleanly out of the sky stayed my hand.
"Yes," I said at last. "I'll take you up on the offer."
Eidolon frowned as the energies around him shifted restlessly. "Are you sure your power can deal with her? Endbringers are not something to play around with."
"Enough," I growled. The word cracked with heat. For a moment, I seriously considered burning him just to make a point.
Then the song spread again.
It crawled through the air like an infection, vibrating against bone and thought alike.
Perfect timing.
I howled.
The revolting madness of the Prophet Shabriri poured out of me as I invoked his whispered words. The sound tore across the battlefield, flooding the sky with the despair and madness of Frenzied Flame. The Simurgh's scream cut off mid-existence, silenced for the third precious time.
Alexandria stiffened. Legend staggered half a step. Eidolon sucked in a sharp breath as the madness brushed their souls.
[Feat Achieved! Silence The Screamer]
[+1 Gold Gacha Ticket]
I turned my burning gaze on Eidolon with contempt. Their confusion at the display was amusing. There was nothing more to say, so I turned my attention away from the heroes.
The golden ticket sat in my mind's eye before I ripped it.
[Hypnos' Blessing]
|Rare Trait|
You are blessed by Hynos, the God of Sleep. Whenever you sleep, your health and energy recovery speeds drastically increase. In addition, you are able to fall asleep anywhere and still experience an uninterrupted, restful sleep. Blessing needs at least 10 minutes of constant sleeping to start.
Useless.
Ignoring the heroes.
I flew upward, the cloak hauling me higher as I pointed straight at the cocoon. "Igris. Ridley. Tear it open with force and flush her out."
Igris hesitated, studying me with a long, unreadable look, then nodded. Ridley roared and flew him into the fray.
The Triumvirate followed.
Alexandria slammed into the rubble at hypersonic speed, shockwaves rippling outward. Legend carved incandescent lines through the dust, cutting corridors of light. Eidolon crushed entire sections inward with immense gravity wells, folding debris in on itself.
Other capes quickly joined in, pouring everything they had into the assault.
I raised my hand and began to shape the Flame.
It condensed instantly. Space warped around it as light bent inward. The mass swelled, dense and churning, growing heavier and hotter until it felt like I was holding a newborn sun in my palm.
The cocoon ruptured under the combined attack, chunks flying free as the Simurgh was exposed to the world once more.
She reacted immediately.
The Simurgh split.
Radiant light flared, and dozens of identical copies burst outward in every direction, perfect replicas scattering across the battlefield.
"NO!"
I fired on instinct, invoking Midra's madness and wielding the borrowed will of another Lord of Frenzied Flame.
The world buckled in response. Frenzied Flame collapsed inward, condensing into something dense and absolute, a burning star that reigned over the battlefield. Calamitous fire roared outward from it, tearing through the sky and erasing several projections outright.
But there were too many.
Even with power screaming through my veins, I couldn't catch them all. One by one, they vanished into the distance with no way to tell which one was real.
The Simurgh had fled.
[Feat Achieved! Savior of Canberra!]
[+1 Diamond Gacha Ticket]
The city still stood.
Against all expectations, it had survived. Whatever grand devastation the Simurgh had intended had been broken.
I had forced her retreat. I lived.
Yet.
It brought me no satisfaction.
Only wrath.
Rage flooded in, blinding and absolute, boiling at the thought that my prey had escaped her righteous end. She should have burned. She should have been reduced to sacred kindling for the Frenzied Flame, her existence ending in screaming light and despair.
Now… what?
The Simurgh had fled. Slipped free of her rightful death by fire. The thought gnawed at me, filling the reaches of my mind with despair, until my vision tunneled and my thoughts began to fracture at my failure.
I turned, angling my hand toward the city below, flame coiling greedily at my palm.
If I couldn't burn her, I could burn this. Reduce it all to ash. Let the world return to CHAOS.
A shadowed fist slammed into my wrist, knocking my aim wide.
A gauntleted arm locked around my throat in one brutal motion, cutting off my breath and leverage at once as the world tilted. Igris hauled me downward, inexorable, unyielding.
I invoked the Frenzied Flame.
Fire surged from me, tearing into him, and for a heartbeat I felt it—felt him burn under the weight of Chaos.
Even as I felt his body begin to crumble, he refused to let go.
I had spent too much.
Too much power poured into chasing the Simurgh. Too much flame burned too fast. I needed more time.
"Treachery," I rasped, struggling with what little strength remained. "Stop. Igris, I order you to stop. You deny me my rightful ascendance as LORD of FRENZIED FLAME. I will ascend!"
My vision began to blur, the world smearing into heat and shadow as I began to pass out. The last thing I saw was Ridley and The Fool descending toward me through the smoke.
Then darkness took me.
***
What are some global things you'd like to see from Worm? Like geschellcraft, machine army, or maybe the simurgh zones etc.
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters on my if you wanna read ahead.